I’ve been really busy lately, so I had to find a way to gain some more time. So I started by eliminating feeds from my RSS reader. What did I cut?
Every feed that regurgitates news, comments on news, has nothing but opinion on news, etc. There’s simply no reason to hit 3 fora and 30-300 blogs all letting me know that Terry Semel is no longer the CEO of Yahoo.
So I started looking for ‘actionable’ items that get posted and it was no surprise when I found that very little of what is written around the Web is news you can use. I’m not going to list each forum or blog, but do yourself a favor, run down the list of blogs and fora you read regularly, take a look at the headlines and see how much of that news you can actually use.
I’ve also made a decision not to post the types of items that I found were simply consuming time without offering up something useful. So if you see a ‘news’ post here, call me on it. ; )
That’s not to say that won’t post items that I find odd or interesting, like words with interesting origins or definitions, but there won’t be any ‘Google buys yet another company’ posts.
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Pingback on Jul 9th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
[...] And don’t forget to read the blog post that inspired Ryan Clark’s which can be found at Speaking Freely [...]
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Pingback on Jul 9th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
[...] Less News Is Good News Speaking Freely Dean Thursday July 5th 2007 [...]
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Blog Stuff
Word Of The Day- affray: Dictionary.com Word of the Day July 5, 2009affray: a tumultuous assault or quarrel; a brawl.
- Presented By: July 5, 2009
- affray: Dictionary.com Word of the Day July 5, 2009
- Quote Of The Day
- Michael Crichton"I am certain there is too much certainty in the world."
- Michael Crichton
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- intexticated July 2, 2009intexticated adj. Preoccupied by reading or sending text messages, particularly while driving a car. —intexticating pp. —intextication n. Example Citations: The usual concerns arise, knowing teen drivers will be packing the ever-present buzzing and ringing cell phones from which most seem incapable of parting. We've had the disc […]
- Wikipedia kid June 30, 2009Wikipedia kid n. A student who has poor research skills and lacks the ability to think critically. Example Citations: As an English professor at Algonquin College in Ottawa, I was very impressed by the report's neologism: "Wikipedia kids." Too many graduates of Ontario's high schools know how to cut and paste, but have learnt […]
- carrotmob June 26, 2009carrotmob n. An event where people support an environmentally-friendly store by gathering en masse to purchase the store's products. Also: carrot mob. —carrotmobber n. —carrotmobbing pp. Example Citations: Forget sticks, and stick with carrots instead. So says Brent Schulkin, founder of a fledgling movement of activist consumers […]
- phantom fat June 25, 2009phantom fat n. Lost body fat that is still perceived by a person who used to be overweight. Example Citations: Body-image experts say it's not uncommon for people, especially women, who have lost a lot of weight to be disappointed to some extent to discover that they still aren't "perfect." The excess fat is gone when they re […]
- weisure June 8, 2009weisure n. Free time spent doing work or work-related tasks. [Blend of work and leisure.] Example Citations: Weisure has been fueled by social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, where "friends" may actually be business partners or work colleagues. "Social networking as an activity is one of those ambiguous activities, […]
- DDo$ June 4, 2009DDo$ n. A scheme where a fine or fee is paid using a massive number of small electronic payments, particularly when each payment generates a transaction cost greater than the payment itself. Example Citations: After the Pirate Bay founders were fined $3.5 million, they swore they wouldn't cough up a single cent. Instead, they've come u […]
- space headache June 4, 2009space headache n. A debilitating headache experienced by astronauts during space travel. Example Citations: Astronauts need to add space headache to their list of occupational hazards, say researchers. ... The researchers believe there are a number of reasons why space travel could cause headaches, the root cause being microgravity. Micrograv […]
- VB6 June 3, 2009VB6 n. A person who eats a vegan diet before 6:00 PM, and then whatever they want after that. [From the phrase vegan before 6.] Example Citations: VB6. No, it's not a tomato cocktail or the latest version of a computer programming language. VB6 is short for Vegan Before 6, the increasingly popular veggie-heavy diet that converts say can do […]
- Idaho stop June 2, 2009Idaho stop n. Stop sign behavior where a vehicle, particularly a bicycle, slows down but does not come to a complete stop. Example Citations: Here's an idea that would light up talk-radio phone lines, even though it would do little more than legalize what many cyclists do every day anyway: It's called the Idaho stop. ... Almost no cyc […]
- wallet neuropathy July 3, 2009
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July 6, 2007 at 12:55 am
This is the kind of thing you will kick yourself for not doing a long time ago. I just eliminated 15 feeds out of a meager 39. I’m going beyond the 80/20 rule here just because I think it’s well worth it. I find myself looking at blogs more and more for this very reason. I used to be a forum junkie and spent most of the day sifting through bad opinions on recent headlines. It wasn’t until I started utilizing the RSS reader that a new world opened up. Now I get comments all the time from people during conversation, “How did you know that?” and “Where do you find these things”.
The last 8 books I have read/bought have been blog author recommendations. And they were phenomenal books.
It’s the Digg theory, Find people who’s insight you value and if they find it interesting it might be worth checking out.
July 6, 2007 at 1:30 am
Oh come, surely 300 different takes on a Google employee sneezing is worth the read? ;)
I’m finding myself in the same position these days – too busy to post or read much and I’ve noticed a lot lately that even the more popular SEO related news sites like SEW, SEL, etc have a lot of fairly naff self promotional “articles” popping into the mix as well. With TW dying I’d say there is a pretty good market out there for a decent news aggreator type site to fill the void.
MG
July 14, 2007 at 10:27 am
I decided that for a week I would take notes of new or valuable tips I picked up from the blogs I was reading and forums I visited.
4 days into it my notepad had only 3 entries, so I changed tack and categorized those “online resources” by news, education (this one), inspiration, etc.
I nuked the rss feed and just did drive-bys for the rest of the week. I found very little that was time sensitive or of huge value, so now I just allot a time frame to check up on a few places.